Design-Based Research in Early Childhood Education: A Scoping Review of Methodologies

In recent years the notion of teachers as researchers in their own educational settings has become more prominent and encouraged in research literature. In the context of early childhood education (ECE), the participatory role of teachers is especially suited given its multidisciplinary and practice-based research space. This paper explores this premise and presents a scoping review of ECE studies which have employed a Design-based research (DBR) methodology. The review revealed DBR to be a very recent evolution of participatory methodologies with 25 international studies identified from 2013 to 2023, with differing notions and levels of participation within their phase design and overlapping focus areas and outputs. Implications are discussed in relation to the nature of participants’ roles in DBR, and the emergence of DBR as an apt model of research-informed professional learning for early childhood educators.